A Note to Our Readers

In February, it will be ninety years since Harold Ross founded The New Yorker. It’s amazing what fruits of his invention persist from that first issue until today: The Talk of the Town, Goings On, and Profiles—a one-pager on Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the impresario of the Metropolitan Opera. (Other departments—Say It with Scandal, Of All Things, and the high-society notes of In Our Midst—were more short-lived.) A chain-smoking, ulcer-inflicting worrier and genius, Ross did not ignore the details. As he wrote to a colleague, “I am forced to acknowledge that we carried an ad for a belching preventative two or three weeks ago, but that was because the advertising manager was asleep.”

And yet, for all his eagle-eyed attention, Ross could not have anticipated all the ways in which his inky corner of the world would change. He and his contemporaries relied solely on paper and the U.S. mail for reproduction and distribution. Since 2001, however, The New Yorker has also meant newyorker.com, a Web site, which has grown immensely, in audience and in substance, particularly in the past few years. And there is now more change on the digital front—in appearance, content, and access.

This week, newyorker.com has a new look. On a desktop, on a tablet, on a phone, the site has become, we believe, much easier to navigate and read, much richer in its offerings, and a great deal more attractive. For months, our editorial and tech teams have been sardined into a boiler room, subsisting only on stale cheese sandwiches and a rationed supply of tap water, working without complaint on intricate questions of design, functionality, access, and what is so clinically called “the user experience.”

The changes are not limited to technology and aesthetics. The Web site already publishes fifteen original stories a day. We are promising more, as well as an even greater responsiveness to what is going on in the world. For instance, in addition to Daily Comment, which usually concerns itself with political matters, we will also feature a Daily Cultural Comment, a regular column in which our critics and other writers confront everything from the latest debates over the impact of technology to the latest volume from Chicago, Oslo, or Lima and the ongoing sagas of Don Draper, Daenerys Targaryen, and Hannah Horvath.

We are also making our work more easily available. When we started newyorker.com, we, like everyone else, faced the dilemma of what to post online. Give it all away or hold things back? That was the question. Our approach was . . . both. We posted some pieces from the print magazine but held most of them back; our subscribers could, with a little effort, unlock those blue padlocks and read it all.

It’s fair to say that this split-the-difference approach was not ideal. Beginning this week, absolutely everything new that we publish—the work in the print magazine and the work published online only—will be unlocked. All of it, for everyone. Call it a summer-long free-for-all. Non-subscribers will get a chance to explore The New Yorker fully and freely, just as subscribers always have. Then, in the fall, we move to a second phase, implementing an easier-to-use, logical, metered paywall. Subscribers will continue to have access to everything; non-subscribers will be able to read a limited number of pieces—and then it’s up to them to subscribe. You’ve likely seen this system elsewhere—at the Times, for instance—and we will do all we can to make it work seamlessly.

The print version of The New Yorker is still a fine technology (try rolling up your iPad; and don’t drop it too often!), but more advanced technology has some distinct advantages. Publishing beyond the printed page allows us to present the gift of greater immediacy, the ability to respond to events when we have something to say; the site offers podcasts, video, interactive graphics, and slide shows of photographs and cartoons. The new design also allows us to reach back and highlight work from our archives more easily. Beginning this week, every story we’ve published since 2007 will be available on newyorker.com, in the same easy-to-read format as the new work we’re publishing. Over the summer, we’ll also provide a sampling of many of the older pieces that our readers keep asking for—including short stories by Alice Munro and Junot Díaz, Janet Flanner on Isadora Duncan, Calvin Trillin on the crime reporter Edna Buchanan, and Mark Singer on the magician Ricky Jay. We’ve also asked our writers to recommend favorite stories from the past, and those selections will be featured on the site and on social media throughout the summer.

We’ll undoubtedly remind you again, but, come fall, subscribers will be able to make use of a plan that gives them unlimited access to newyorker.com, and our complete archive, using a Web browser on any smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. They’ll also be able to download our magazine app for tablets and smartphones—the full issue of each week’s magazine—to read anytime, anywhere, on a wide range of devices, via the iTunes App Store, Google Play, or Amazon.

A final point—and, arguably, the most important. Publishing the best work possible remains our aim. Advances in design and technology are tools in that effort. In all forms—digital and paper—we intend to publish in the same spirit of freedom, ambition, and accuracy as Harold Ross did when he prowled the halls nearly ninety years ago, the latest model of pencil stuck behind his prominent left ear. ♦

Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign up for the daily newsletter: the best of The New Yorker every day.